FOREIGN AFFAIRS

FOREIGN AFFAIRS; The Meaning of Berlin

By Flora Lewis

Published: November 26, 1989

LONDON—
The second World War was plotted in Berlin, and since Germany's defeat its former capital has been at the focal point of most of the serious crises threatening another major war. This underscores the meaning of the opening of the wall and the transformation of Eastern Europe.

The Soviet armies made the Western allies wait two months after the fall of Berlin before being admitted to join in the occupation of the city, which allowed the Russians to sweep up records and install their own people. Then, after splitting the city's four-power administration in 1948, they tried to reduce and absorb the Western sectors with a blockade.

President Harry Truman responded with the air lift, which could have led to war but finally saved West Berlin. Still, people could move freely through the city. It was in Berlin that the two-dog joke was launched. A dog from the East and a dog from the West met at the border. Each was astonished to see the other going in the opposite direction. ''I want to eat,'' said the Western dog. ''But why are you going West? There's nothing there.'' ''I want to bark,'' said the Eastern dog.

Now, nobody asks why. After 40 years, it's obvious to all. In 1953 when East Berlin workers arose in protest and were brutally repressed, the Communist playwright Bertolt Brecht commented, ''The government has lost the confidence of the people. It will have to elect a new people.''

That is happening too, all over the East. Some young East Germans, speaking of ''our gentle revolution,'' told the New York Times correspondent Henry Kamm, ''We will no longer let ourselves be lied to, intimidated, manipulated, humiliated.'' In Prague, huge crowds applauded a speaker who said: ''Now is the time for freedom. We want humanity, the humanity of Tomas Masaryk,'' the first President of independent, democratic Czechoslovakia whose name was made a taboo by the Communists.

The Berlin wall was built only in 1961, long after the Iron Curtain had blacked out the rest of the East, sealing the last escape hole into what came to be called ''the showcase of democracy.'' That was a few months after the disastrous Kennedy-Khrushchev summit meeting in Vienna, the result of a torrential outpouring of East Germans fleeing because of the increasingly belligerent East-West climate.

From Hyannisport, Mr. Kennedy reacted to the wall with relief, calling it a ''tremendous propaganda victory for the West.'' Berliners were appalled. They marched to the city hall, calling on then West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt to lead them on a march through the Brandenburg Gate to enforce reopening of their city.

It would have led to a monstrous massacre. Mr. Brandt dissuaded them, and by the end of the week Mr. Kennedy understood the gravity of the situation. He ordered the American garrison reinforced and sent Vice President Lyndon Johnson to assure West Berliners that they would be saved again. But a year later, Khrushchev sent nuclear missiles to Cuba, and it was evident that Berlin was a major stake in the crisis.

Eventually, the long Berlin crisis was eased by a four-power agreement on access to the West. The Western powers recognized East Germany, the status quo that has held for nearly two decades. It is crumbling now and will go much further, depending not on governments but on all those frustrated people and their inchoate hopes.

Nobody knows what they will do. The day the wall opened earlier this month (it already seems like years) people gathered to talk near the Brandenburg Gate. A Westerner with hair dyed mint green and a pimply face was arguing to Easterners that it was unfair for people with better educations or greater skills to earn more than those who were lazier or less fortunate. ''That is utopian, unrealistic; you can see the disaster,'' said an Easterner, who nonetheless reacted angrily when someone said the whole wall should be cleared away. ''It's our wall,'' he argued, ''we will decide.''

Another Westerner said: ''The threat of war is over. We won't need guns anymore.''

There are two basic reasons why all this has come to a head suddenly. One is that the people of Eastern Europe have become convinced that the Russians are not coming. Mr. Gorbachev's new policies have been put to the test. The East European regimes still have great force, but one after another they have been overwhelmed by the power of their deeply frustrated but peaceful people who have a new sense of themselves.

The other reason is communications. Everybody knows what is happening, right away. They say if Poland can do it, if Hungary can do it, why not us? Who are we to go on cowering? This sense is spreading around the world. After the assassination of Rene Moawad, Lebanese told me, ''Why not us? Why can't we learn peace?'' It is reaching Africa. Berlin, the city of war and danger, is now the symbol of a truly changing world. Might is losing its terrors and its claims.